Better Chocolate Through Supercomputing

The candy company Mars announced this week that it was joining with IBM and the Department of Agriculture to sequence and analyze the cocoa genome. Working with massive supercomputers, a team of researchers will genetically breed cocoa trees that can withstand the warmer weather and lethal fungi that have shrunk the cocoa harvest in recent years, driving the price of cocoa up 50 percent in the last year. Presumably, the researchers will also get to add the raw genome to their chocolate chip cookie batter.